Jeffrey C. Stewart has won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for his book The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke (Oxford University Press, 2018). The biography gives a panoramic view of the personal trials and artistic triumphs of Alain Locke, queer philosopher and father of the Harlem Renaissance, and the movement he inspired.
Dr. Stewart is a professor of Black studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has been on the faculty at the university since 2008. Dr. Stewart as served chair of the department of Black studies from 2008 to 2016.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Stewart served as a Fulbright Professor of American Studies at the University of Rome III, a W.E.B. Du Bois and a Charles Warren Fellow at Harvard University, and lecturer at the Terra Foundation for American Art in Giverny, France. Additionally, he has experience teaching at Yale University, UCLA, Tufts University, Howard University, Scripps College, and George Mason University.
In addition to The Life of Alain Locke, Dr. Stewart is the author of two other books: 1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African American History (Doubleday, 1996) and Paul Robeson: Artist and Citizen (Rutgers University Press, 1998). One of his more recent publications is “Beyond Category: Before Afro-Futurism There was Norman Lewis,” in Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis (Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, November 2015), an exhibition catalogue that won the 2017 Alfred H. Barr Award of the College Art Association.
Dr. Stewart holds two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. in American studies all from Yale University.
